A Daydream
by Enigmatics
Summary: They never come for her, of course, but Bo still thinks about them.


They never come for her, but Bo still thinks about them.

The first year she occupies herself with cloud formations. The fleecy ones called cirrus. The dark ones that herald rain, nimbus. The ones that look like her sheep are cumulus. Once she spotted a big one in the shape of a moth, or a floppy hat, and she watched that one for such a long time that it was dusk when they hollered at her to get back into place, don't be caught standing up, the master of the house is coming.

The other toys don't like her. She reminds them of something unpleasant. She acts like she doesn't belong, never taking off her shoes, glancing constantly at the window. At first they ask her where she came from, what sorts of people her old owners had been. One of them, a tattered bear that smelled like moth balls, tells her kindly that it gets easier with time. Is the exact phrase that comes out of his mouth, it gets easier with time hun. Bo just smiles at them all. It was just a misunderstanding, she says. They put me in the wrong box. I don't know what's taking them so long, she says, turning and craning her neck. You'll see. They'll be here any minute now, she tells them all, and the strength of her conviction makes some the older ones turn away.

The little girl whose house Bo sleeps in now, she wants to be an astronaut. Her bookshelf is filled with big popup books of planets and nebulas, novels about little men and women who live on the moon, on mars, or in big glass ships where it's always spring and always nighttime. Bo takes a look at those, and for a while they distract her. But when she pulls out the fourth or fifth book what she sees on the cover is a man in Buzz Lightyear's suit. After that she stays away from those stories. She doesn't want to get Buzz mixed up with some other man. She'll only confuse him when they meet again.

So she settles on meterology. Temperatures and expansion and rain and thunder. Clouds are simplest.

She has ample time to stare at clouds. Most days she sits with her feet dangling out the window as her sheep low behind her. She lets one lick her hand, but when it nudges her towards its fellows, stepping on her skirts, she gently pushes it away.

Her sheep don't understand her. They want to be husbanded. They wail piteously when she wanders too far away from them. After the first few weeks the other toys relieve Bo of the task, leading them into a fold-up barn. For weeks afterward, when she hears them baaing behind its walls, her fingers itch.

In the second year she thinks she'd like to keep her friends alive. Not that they aren't alive, but she feels remiss letting them save her while she does nothing.

She misses Buzz because with him there was no need to start a conversation. She finds herself longing for his gaudy chevrons and stickers, each part of him a boast that here was something more dangerous than all the gadgetry he used.

She misses Rex because he was always worried about her.

He was worried about everything, of course, but his shrill fussiness even seems tender now, since clouds are indifferent and sheep can't form words.

She misses Potato's wisecracking, she misses looking after Wheezy.

What else?

There's Woody, of course, but whenever Bo tries to think about him her mind balks, skips past the man, and she is left with the particulars of his clothing, of the painted blush on his cheeks, an oddly feminine touch, like a primadonna's rouge. She remembers when his arm snagged on a tack and nearly tore off at the seam. It wasn't quite the same after that, even when they stitched it back together. Each time he was repaired he looked a little bit shabbier.

She never told him how much she envied him that. Porcelain is impossible to mend.

After the second year she stops counting. Starts to daydream instead. Thinks of the first days of her life, when windowshoppers pointed at her with mouths round and delighted. Remembers the first customers of the toy store, the ones who'd almost bought her. Each of them would kneel to better see her, the handpainted flesh, the real hair, the print dress, a wonder, yes, a marvel, and all would reach their fingers out and touch the glass that seperated her from them, as if they were paying her homage.

She doesn't know where any of them went. Whether or not they got into their blue automobiles and drove into their separate, individual disasters, and left her to hers. It doesn't seem to matter this far into her life.

Perhaps age isn't the accumulation of years written onto the skin. Perhaps it is merely an untold longing, like air before a thunderstorm. How did they know she was old? Not because of her body; she hadn't a single crack on on her body. It must have been that first time she was asked Where are you from?

Rather than answer, she looked past them all, looked at the clouds past the windowsill, and thought that it would be evening soon.

These days Bo doesn't talk much. Just waits, waits and thinks about the things she's lost. Little things. Her bonnet, for one.

She thinks, it would be nice if Woody brought my bonnet. I lost that so long ago. She doesn't look like a shepherdess without a bonnet.

In the dreams she has it always happens like this: she's looking after her sheep, calling them by name. Each one is clever enough to remember the name it's been assigned. She feels a draft come in behind her, thinks that they should shut the window—that's when she hears her name shouted, once. It's Woody, sprawled onto her desk like something a bird has dropped. He scrambles up.

We found you, he says, unself-conscious and grinning his little rouged grin. Now he's running in that ragdoll way of his, limbs flailing, her awkward little cowboy. When he reaches her he tries to scoop Bo up, the way he always used to try. I weigh more than you, she says, giddily, but just this one time he succeeds.

All of us came, he says. He tells her they're going to hide her where Andy can't find her. She won't ever have to see a yard sale again. A huge balloon is dangling outside, and the rest of them are in its basket, waving. And if she can't quite remember all of their names, what difference does it make? She'll learn them again.

Woody? she asks. You wouldn't happen to have my bonnet, would you?

Of course, he says.

Oh good, she says. That's good, Woody.

That's not how it happens, of course, but Bo still thinks about them.


End file.
